Originally Posted by
Sum Ting Wong
If you understand global trade you would know that what's good for Wal-Mart is also good for the US. Wal-Mart is a retailer, not a manufacturer. It provides hundreds of thousands jobs for otherwise low- or no-income households, and sells good quality products at prices people can afford. The fact that they come from China means nothing more than if they had come from Mississippi.
If you expect to create more jobs in America, you'd better focus your attention on manufacturers, making them competitive with Chinese. In the meantime, thanks to Wal-Mart we have a lot more jobs here at home.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
Wow, this is over-the-top naive.
Walmart IS capitalism, but consider a few things:
I'm not sure if you've ever shopped at walmart, but most of what they have is *4 letter word*. They do crazy things like have the manufacturers make the plastic rubbermaid waste baskets thinner than you'd get at home depot. They strong-arm their suppliers to cut the cost to the point where it is not a "quality" product as you claim, it's nowhere near that. Plenty of american manufacturers hold out and refuse to make something they know is going to just fail in a week, but the entire purpose of walmart is to find someone that will, and sell the product. Then there's the issue of selection, which blows my mind. Due to work, I have to go back to the midwest where sometimes there's no alternative but to get some groceries in walmart (they drove out the other supermarkets or they never existed ). With a store that big, you'd think you'd find all kinds of stuff, from cheap to expensive, with selection that's "off the wall", but it's the opposite, they don't carry anywhere near the selection of a normal supermarket, they just put more of the same crap on the shelves in bigger boxes. It's been frustrating trying to find a certain sauce, spice, or whatever due to this.
You can pretend that walmart puts out "good quality stuff", but that's about as naive as it gets. Sure, "more jobs", but these jobs are subsidized partly by the government by requiring people to go on food stamps (walmart helps their employees do this). Is "more jobs" better than "good jobs"? Luckily we got plenty of regional airline jobs out there that provide "jobs"....except it seems those pilots are starting to get fed up with "just having a job" of indentured servitude.